Stories from the Vault: Heirlooms
by PSITeleport
Summary: Blame your old man for your bad habits, kid. Mild Shika/Tema


**A/N:** I was never very happy with this story. I was ninety percent finished when I realized that, in what was supposed to be a comedy, I'd unintentionally scratched the surface of something that could have been very deep and emotional and beautiful. But I didn't really have the energy to go back and plumb those depths, so when I was done I was a little regretful at the shallowness I was left with. But here it is, anyway. Thanks for reading and please review. :)

**Heirlooms**

Shikamaru knew what was in the wooden box on the left shelf of the cupboard before he opened it. That was the thing about having someone else in your head; sometimes their emotions slid so cleanly into place in your own mind that they caused memories by association. Dad's feelings of panic and humiliation and, beneath it all, remembered excitement had recalled to Shikamaru his first stolen peek at a picture of a naked girl. Henceforth, porn.

He opened the box quietly and found what he'd been expecting, although maybe not as _much_ as he'd been expecting. There was a recent issue of _Playnin_, plus a couple of back issues of varying dates. Beneath those was a copy of the much raunchier _Slick,_ and last of all was a magazine Shikamaru had never heard of called _Stud_. It was _really_ old, more than thirty years. The women were hair-sprayed to full volume, which quickly and thankfully doused any hints of budding arousal. There was no bigger turn-off than too much hairspray. And he didn't want to get turned on while looking at his father's porn, anyway. Not now. Not in Dad's study, with the man only two hours in the grave.

Maybe tomorrow.

As he sneaked the porn out of the office and into his room he had to call on his command of silence and invisibility to make sure his mother caught no wind whatsoever of his covert actions. He strafed along one wall of the hallway, keeping his eyes peeled in front of him, then behind. He nonchalantly cracked open his bedroom door and peered inside, just to make sure she hadn't let herself in to start cleaning or something. She tended to clean through her grief, so that was a real possibility. But the coast was clear, so he kept his eyes on the end of the hall and stealthily backed in. Rather than closing the door quietly, which always alerted Mom to unusual behavior, he slammed it like everything was normal. Then he quickly stashed the magazines in one of his drawers, just in case she got the notion to come up here and scold him for the slamming. He'd have to find a better hiding place later, but the drawer would do for now.

He stood stock-still, waiting for the sound of Mom's footsteps in the hall. The first thirty-seven seconds were the most dangerous; if she hadn't said anything to him by then, she wasn't going to. Thirty-seven seconds passed without incident, so he finally let out the breath he'd been holding and turned around.

There, in the middle of his bedroom, stood Temari.

"Gah!" he said.

She watched him with a look of concerned amusement. "What are you doing?"

"What are _you_ doing?" he demanded, then he caught himself. Too suspicious. He was being too suspicious. "I mean, why are you in my room?"

"Just thought I'd come around and check on you." There was no compassion in her voice; she'd said it the same way one might mention that they were going to check the batteries in a smoke detector. It was the fact that she'd bothered to come at all that caught his attention. Like Shikamaru, she still wore her funeral clothes. Black-on-black.

"We have a front door," he said.

"Maybe I didn't want to go through the front door. Why are you sneaking around like a criminal? What did you hide in there?" She jerked her head toward his dresser.

"Nothing. It's none of your business."

She cocked an eyebrow.

"I mean, it's personal. Personal stuff that belonged to my dad. So I don't want to go into it."

_"_Oh_,"_ she said, suddenly understanding. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

She glanced around his room, uncertain, then her eyes fell on him. "You doing alright?"

He nodded, surprised at how human she was being. It wasn't in her nature, but it impressed him that she was trying. "I think I'm in limbo. I've come to terms with the fact that he's dead, but I don't let myself imagine...you know. The future without him."

"Doesn't that mean you're in denial?"

"Probably." He heard a tremor in his own voice. Nothing new. He swallowed it down and saved it for later, when there wouldn't be company. But Temari heard it and she crossed the room purposefully toward him. He didn't know what she had in mind until she pulled him down and kissed him softly, and even then he was too stunned to let it register. His eyes were still wide open when she pulled away.

"What was that for?" he said stupidly.

"I don't know. You just looked like a guy who needed to be kissed." She grinned and pointed to the dresser. "Now, tell me what you hid in there."

He groaned.

"Come on, Shikamaru. I'm not going to tell anyone, and it's going to drive me crazy wondering. I might even sneak in during the night and look around."

"You would _not."_

"For all you know, I already have. You sleep like a freaking rock."

"Oh, fine. But keep it between us, okay? It's embarrassing."

He locked his bedroom door just to be safe, then slipped the magazines out of his dresser. He could feel his face warming as he passed them to Temari, but she examined them with no trace of contempt or amusement.

"His porn?"

"He didn't want my mom to find out about them. Although, in retrospect, he probably didn't want some random Suna kunoichi to know about them, either."

"Too late now." She shuffled to the last magazine, the ancient _Stud. _"What's the deal with this one?"

"I think it was his first one."

"How do you know?"

He realized he'd said too much and tried to shrug it off. "Just guessing."

"Wow, look at these chicks. Look at their _racks._ I guess natural wasn't en vogue back then." She sat on his bed and laid the magazines out side-by-side so she could see them all at once. Then she snickered. "Know what I just realized about these?"

He found it difficult to look directly at them with her sitting right there. "What?"

"The girls on the front all look like your mom. That was her standing next to you at the funeral, right?"

Before he could stop himself, he glanced at the covers. Then he jerked his eyes away, cursing, but it was too late. The images of five naked, black-haired kunoichi had burned themselves into his brain. He shoved his palms against his eyes and tried to rub the images away. "Why? Why would you say something like that to me?"

She laughed and tapped the magazines back into a neat pile, then handed them to him. He held them between two fingers, refusing to look at them again.

"What are you going to do with them?" she asked.

Well, he definitely wasn't going to keep them _now._ "I guess I'll have to throw them away some place where Mom won't find them. For now I have to hide them."

He put them back in the drawer, and when he turned around Temari was patting the bed next to her. Her eyes were sparkling. "Have a seat."

He lowered himself to the bed beside her, sitting as close to her as he dared. She scooted in the remaining distance.

"I kissed you, you know," she said.

"I remember."

"I think you should kiss me back, so I don't get the idea that you didn't like it."

He licked his lips, then leaned over and gave her what he hoped was a solid, reassuring kiss. He felt her fingers stroking the back of his neck, then under his jaw. She was right. He needed this. It helped both to assuage his grief and erase inappropriate recollections of black-haired kunoichi in indecent poses. Blonde. Blonde was _so_ much better.

"Shikamaru."

It took him a second to realize that it wasn't Temari who had said his name. His mother's voice was coming through his bedroom door, and he heard her jiggle the handle, trying to get in.

"Crap," he said. Temari's eyes were wide.

"Shikamaru, open the door." Mom sounded tired, tired and grief-stricken and a little bit pissed.

"Uh..." He looked at Temari, then at his window. Would there be enough time for her to sneak out? "Hang on just a second..."

"Are you naked?" Mom asked.

"No."

"Then open the damned door. Don't make me wait."

He exhaled, defeated, and sloughed over to the door. He unlocked it and let his mother in, then braced himself for the hell he was about to catch for having a girl in his room. It wasn't fair. It's not like he'd ever done anything like this before, and technically it wasn't even his fault Temari was here. Still, count on _his_ mother to somehow find out about it. But Mom's eyes barely showed recognition that someone else was in the room.

"Where are they?" she said.

"Where are what?"

"You know good and well what. I _want_ what you took out of your father's study."

In spite of himself, he caught himself glancing at Temari. She was grimacing and trying not to show it. "I have no idea what you-"

"_Dammit_!" Mom slammed her hand into his bookshelf, and the whole thing banged against the wall. A couple of books fell onto the wooden floor with a thud. "I don't want to hear you lie to me again! Never again!"

Mom was breathing heavily, her eyes red. Shikamaru was ashamed. He retrieved Dad's magazines from his dresser and gave them to her; she sighed and fingered the edges of the pages, almost fondly.

"I'm putting these back where they go," she said, "and until you hear from me, I don't want anything in Dad's study to be disturbed. Do you understand me? I want it _exactly_ the way it was until I change my mind!"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I only took them because Dad told me to. He didn't know you already knew about them.

"Stupid man. Of _course_ I knew about them." She braced herself against his doorjamb with one hand, and then she turned back to look at him. Her eyes slid over to Temari for the first time and, by some miracle, a tiny smile crossed her lips. "For the record, I know about yours, too."

While he choked, Mom wiggled her fingers in goodbye and disappeared down the hall. He couldn't say anything to Temari, couldn't even look at her. After a minute he shut his bedroom door, and the silence in his room became a palpable blanket.

"She was joking," He finally forced out. He knew he didn't sound credible but he couldn't help but try and defend himself. "I don't have any porn. I don't even _like_ porn. It's offensive and..." His voice started to trail off as he ran out of good excuses. "...degrading to women..."

"Shikamaru, relax. I believe you."

"You do?" Surprised, he turned around to look at her. She was smirking and holding up his precious, well-worn copy of _Badass Blondes_.

"Just kidding. Told you you sleep like a rock."

**The End**


End file.
